Time in Between
by devilisinthedetails
Summary: Zahir is knighted and doesn't know what to make of the milestone.


Time in Between

Zahir was too much of a Bazhir—a people who would die before they knelt especially to northerners—to enjoy kneeling before the king of Tortall even if it was to earn his knighthood. He couldn't even console himself by pretending that he was merely kneeling before the Voice since knighthood was a purely northern rite.

A northern king was bestowing him with a northern title. He was supposed to feel honored, but instead he felt hollow, as if his work over the past eight years had bought him a tainted title sullied by the blood of his people. Being a knight was probably more of a disgrace than an accolade for a Bazhir.

As Zahir knelt, King Jonathan struck each of Zahir's shoulders with the flat of his sword. Zahir could feel the bruises swelling in his shoulders already and inwardly cursed the northern custom that required those blows to be powerful enough to bruise.

It was some ritual about being the last slaps a man would have to tolerate before he was allowed to fight for his honor. The whole tradition was rendered even more ridiculous by the fact that squires were permitted to challenge anyone who insulted their honor in the lists and almost everyone looked the other way when pages brawled for similar reasons. Smacking someone who hit you was socially acceptable and even condoned long before you were knighted. Once again, the northerners failed to follow their own idiotic rules.

The sword tap on Zahir's head was mercifully lighter, and there was so much pride in the king's eyes as he proclaimed him Sir Zahir that Zahir almost felt joy in the middle of this holiday he didn't celebrate surrounded by a court that would forever regard him as a savage.

As his knightmaster—no, former knightmaster now—bade him to remember his vows, his service to the Crown, and the laws of chivalry, Zahir refused to contemplate the generations of Bazhir who would glower down on him in fury from the afterlife at him swearing fealty to a northern king. Bazhir were meant to take arms against the northern king, not pledge their swords to him, but Zahir had served the northern king personally for four years. In that time, he had developed a loyalty that transcended politics or culture not so much to the northern king or even the Voice but just to the man who had been a kind but firm knightmaster to him.

Zahir's throat was too tight for breathing, and his knees trembled as he rose. Maybe he should have stuck to kneeling. He managed to prevent himself from doing anything as undignified as falling on his face as applause echoed from the vaulted ceiling—enthusiastic from progressives who were eager to prove how above bigotry and quick to embrace the outcast they were; stilted from the conservatives who were probably stewing in resentment that a sand scut had survived his Ordeal when sons from blue-blooded lines had failed or even perished. Little did they know how Zahir was still haunted by Joren's death and Vinson's tortured screams.

Before he could entirely regain his balance, his arms were filled with Princess Vania, who had hurled herself at him in a wild embrace. Zahir's cheeks burned like campfires at being hugged in public by a member of the opposite sex who wasn't (strictly speaking) part of his family, but he surrendered to the fit of Conte passion. With her shifting one moment blue and one moment green eyes, Vania was free with her hugs, her kisses, and her laughter. At twelve, she didn't even see anything sensual about them, or so Zahir liked to believe.

"You did it, Zahir." Vania's cheeks were red as the berries in the holly decking the hall, and Zahir couldn't help but smile slightly at her excitement. Her radiance was contagious. "You're a knight now. Do I have to call you 'sir' from now on?"

"You're a princess." Zahir bit back a snort. "Call me whatever pleases you, Your Highness."

"Zahir pleases me." Vania nodded decisively then added, forehead furrowing, "Your parents didn't come to watch you get knighted."

"I knew they wouldn't." Zahir shrugged because he had never anticipated that they would travel from the desert into the bleak winter snows to see their son swear allegiance to the northern king. "They expected me to be knighted. They would've been disappointed if I'd failed, but that doesn't mean they want to rejoice at me doing what I was supposed to do."

"I don't like your parents." Vania's lips curled into a frown that reflected the one in her forehead.

"You've never met them, Your Highness," Zahir reminded her, more amused than affronted by her bluntness.

"What you've said about them is enough to make me dislike them," insisted Vania, the slightly hooked nose she had inherited from her father in the air. "They should be proud of you. Papa is."

"He is." A quiet voice from behind them chimed in, and Zahir turned to find himself face-to-face with the Crown Prince. "You can see it written all over him."

"The language is a bit difficult to read, though, Your Highness," Zahir said in an undertone to Prince Roald as Vania vanished in search of marzipan, her favorite dessert. "Is he proud of me because I was his squire, because I'm a Bazhir knight, or just because I'm another project he's completed?"

"Most likely some combination of the above. My father is a very complex man, after all." Prince Roald raised his wine glass to Zahir in salute. "You'd best go mingle among your well-wishers. Congratulations, Sir Zahir."

Zahir thought that the heir to the throne was just being his polite self by implying that Zahir had any well-wishers among the Tortallan nobility, but as he set off to locate a glass of spiced cider, his quest was interrupted by progressives swamping him. Obviously they were determined to show that they were more tolerant of the Bazhir than their conservative counterparts. He considered imparting some of his views that would be incompatible with their progressive perspective but refrained only since he could imagine his now former knightmaster lamenting his inability to forge any alliances because of his caustic tongue.

Instead he thanked them in a resolutely bland tone for their congratulations and nodded noncommittally at their optimism that Bazhir knights would flood the realm in the future. He didn't mention that he was aware that no Bazhir children dreamed of knighthood, that the only reason he had pursued knighthood himself was that his father had threatened to beat or even disown him if he did not train to be a knight, and that Bazhir knights would always be scorned in Tortall.

After the tide of progressives, a cluster of nobles who were less dedicated to political ideology and more interested in currying favor with the king for personal and familial advancement swarmed around him like wasps around a hive. Doubtlessly they hoped to garner King Jonathan's notice by being friendly to his former squire.

None of these people cared about him—just the political gain he represented—and he was so weary that he almost welcomed Lord Wyldon's approach.

"Lord Wyldon." Grateful that he hadn't acquired a glass of cider after all as he might have spilled it on his shirt, Zahir bowed to the man he was confident he would forever regard as his training master. Lord Wyldon was one giant of his youth that no amount of time or titles could shrink to a dwarf.

"Sir Zahir ibn Alhaz." Lord Wyldon nodded and used Zahir's full name, as he always did. Zahir suspected that the training master didn't know whether leaving out one of his names was a dreadful insult among the Bazhir. The training master tried not to be prejudiced, but, like all northerners, he was. "Congratulations on your new rank."

"Thank you, my lord." Zahir felt satisfaction surge in his chest. Lord Wyldon's simple sentence meant more to him than all honeyed words of the social climbers and the exaggerated compliments of the progressives combined. Lord Wyldon wouldn't give any praise that wasn't sincere, and he understood how much sweat, blood, and sleepless nights went into becoming a knight. "I just did what was expected of me."

"Knighthood is an honor that's hard to earn." Lord Wyldon's gaze was flinty but distant, and Zahir wondered if he was trapped in the Chamber that had tormented Vinson and killed Joren. "It should never be taken for granted by anyone."

"Very true, sir." If there was any lesson that Zahir had learned over the past eight years, it was not to argue with anything that emerged from Lord Wyldon's mouth.

"Perhaps you will encourage more Bazhir to try for their knighthoods." Lord Wyldon's eyes were fixed on Zahir again but they were so intense that Zahir would have preferred they remained riveted elsewhere. "If all Bazhir are as good with their horses and bows as you, the kingdom would be enriched by their service."

With anyone else, Zahir would have offered a sarcastic remark about the Bazhir all being the same, but with Lord Wyldon, Zahir could only stumble through a rote respectful response to what he realized was meant as a compliment rather than a snub of his culture.

Unsure whether he should be pleased by the praise or miffed at the casual assumption that all his people were the same, Zahir stared after Lord Wyldon's back as they separated in the sea of silk and satin. All he could be sure of was that Lord Wyldon would always disconcert him, and that wasn't fair since Zahir prided himself on his poise.

"You're popular tonight, Zahir." A beaming King Jonathan arrived at Zahir's elbow. "I've been trying to talk to you for awhile but you've been flocked by well-wishers, and, before that, I didn't want to monopolize you."

"Monopolize away, sire." Zahir smirked. "I'm not the popular one. People are only treating me nicely because they think that might make you like them. You're the popular one."

"I hope you're treating the nice people pleasantly." The king sounded torn between humor and seriousness.

"Don't I always, Your Majesty?" Zahir assumed his most innocuous expression.

"If snide were a synonym for pleasant, the answer would be yes," observed King Jonathan dryly. "Since it's not, the answer is a resounding no. Hence my concern."

"I'm a Bazhir in the north." Zahir stifled an eye roll by reminding himself sternly that you did not make dismissive expressions at your king in public. "I offend people before I even open my mouth. I might as well get a few ironic comments in for my own entertainment, sire."

"I didn't come over to scold." King Jonathan draped an arm around Zahir's shoulders. "I came over to congratulate you."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." Zahir bowed his head in what did not feel like adequate acknowledgement of all that his knight master had done for him. "Not just for congratulating me. Thank you for—"

Words failed him when it came to the impossible task of summing up everything the king had done and meant to him over his time as a squire, so he was grateful when King Jonathan suggested gingerly, "For knighting you? No need to thank me for that. You earned it through your own hard work."

"Thank you for that anyway, and not just for that, sire." Zahir was still struggling to articulate his appreciation to the extent that he wished. Sarcasm was much easier to voice than gratitude. "Thank you for taking difficult me as your squire, and thank you for all the time in between that and knighting me."

It was the time in between when the king had asked him to be his squire and when he had been knighted that had brought him to his knees earlier. It was the claps on the back and squeezes on the shoulder when he succeeded or failed. It was the wry jokes and the shining smiles. It was the harsh challenge and the gentle encouragement. It was the patient explanations of political realities Zahir didn't care about. It was a bond that had grown stronger every day without Zahir noticing it. It was a thousand memories that by themselves were meaningless but in the context of his entire relationship with his knightmaster had meant everything.

"It was my pleasure, Zahir." The king patted Zahir's shoulder in a gesture Zahir considered as affectionate as a hug. "Thank you for your service in the past and in the future."

"It's an honor to serve." Zahir ducked his head, ripped between devotion to his ancestors and to his king. His heritage made him hate his vows of service to the northern king, but the northern king's charisma and kindness to Zahir made him take a ferocious pride in fulfilling his oaths of fealty to this man who worked so tirelessly to bring unity to a country divided by every sort of factionalism. "Now and forever, Your Majesty."


End file.
